Category Archives: Flatlander’s

Once again the most anticipated time of the beer year’s calendar has come and gone. The 2018 Flatlander’s Beer Festival was enjoyed by thousands this past weekend and I had the good fortune to attend once again.

For those not familiar with the Flatlander’s Beer Festival, it is the largest beer event in Manitoba. Bringing over 90 booths and over 300 different beers together in one location. This event provides novice and enthusiastic beer fans something to enjoy. It’s also an excellent opportunity for people to try new beers without the “fear” of wasting money, or not liking it. You get to sample so many different styles in an encouraging environment.

I say this every year, but this was the best festival so far. Not only was Surly back with some fun new beers (including Pentagram, an excellent Dark Sour) but almost the entire ice level was local breweries. They brought their A-Game this year and I want to highlight a few of the standouts for me at this years festival.

My best in show goes to Kilter – Fruit Loopulin. This Milkshake IPA made with a variety of fresh fruits and Lupulin powder was spectacular. I also want to give a shout out to my friends at Devil May Care who brought an excellent first beer to show off their mad brewing skills. When two new breweries show up with this type of stuff, it makes me really excited.

Overall, the local beers were the highlight for me. Everyone had something fun to try. Torque even had a custom designed Tap Truck with a la cucaracha horn. Their Cuke Em All Cucumber Saison was awesome as were the other beers they had specially available on tap. Get to their Taproom if you want to give some of them a try.

Half Pints was out in force with their Codename: Ghost NE IPA available in Cans. This is the first beer I’ve in a 473ml can from Half Pints and it will be available in Flight 4 of the Coast to Coaster event at Liquor Marts. This is a very good beer, and if you want to see it more often, I’d suggest you get out and buy some when it becomes available. Hint hint.

To all the local breweries I want to give a kudos. There was something at every booth that I loved from the Mega-Wit at Barn Hammer to the Baltic Porter at Nonsuch, the new core Portage Pilsner at Trans Canada and the FANTASTIC homebrew beers at the Pro/Am booth. It was awesome.

For out of town Highlights, Surly again, for sure. They had Pentagram ( a Dark Sour) and Syx available as special pours. They also were highlighting Bender, the first beer Surly Brewed and an Oatmeal stout and Coffee Bender, a coffee infused Bender. Bender will be coming this fall as a core beer and it’s tasty, so look for that.

Beau’s was also pouring some good stuff, as usual. They are in summer mode with a Hopfenlager (write-up soon) as well as the Tom Green Summer Stout. They will also have some of the Halcyon Barrel House stuff coming to Quality Inn, so be sure to check that out. Finally, always, a perennial favorite of mine, Brewsters brought their wonderful Blue Monk Bourbon Barleywine. Something I look forward to getting each time they bring it to town for the festival. Hope to see it on shelves someday.

This event is something I look forward to every year and I really encourage you to check it out when it roles around next year. Be sure to watch your favorite place to buy beer for new products and give them a try. As well, watch for tickets to the Winnipeg Beer Festival which should be coming soon.

Good Morning Folks. I hope that everyone is as excited as I am for Flatlander’s Beer Festival this week. I will be around at the Saturday Night session this year so if you want to say hello, connect with me on Twitter (@beerwinnipeg).

Before we get into this post, I wanted to encourage you to check out my write-up of last years Festival, as well as visit their website to check-out all the sweet beers. Along with the current local breweries bringing us tasty treats, we will see two new local breweries – Kilter and Devil May Care – bringing us some stuff to try. On top of that, I met with the rep from Surly last week and they’ve got some really fun treats coming our way. Maybe something a little sour? Who knows. If you don’t have tickets yet, get them. I’ll see you there.

I have to start by saying just how incredible it is that there are 10 completely different beers from 10 completely different breweries in this years’ Social Pack. It’s astounding, incredible, and amazing. I never thought we’d be here when I started this blog 3 years ago.

I’m not going to be doing a write-up of every single one of these beers because you should get out there and try them. I just wanted to take the opportunity to let people know that this is available and to encourage people to get out and pick on up. What will you get inside? A huge variety:

There is a lot of stuff in this pack to try. It’s the perfect opportunity to try a variety of local beers in one stop. This pack is starting to show up around the city. In fact, 96 packs sold out in one day at Quality Inn and more are on the way. It’ll be at various craft focused beer vendors like Quality Inn, Econo Lodge, Tux and the Beer Market in Charleswood.

Another year and another Flatlander’s Beer Festival has come and gone. Last year I opined that it was the best festival to date. Well, this years was just a smidge better. With the advent of so many new breweries in Winnipeg, more getting close enough that they have beer, and the arrival of Surly (who just raised the bar for beer in this city) it was an awesome festival.

This year I had the opportunity to act as a Beer Geek once again. I love this role and had a fantastic time. Helping people find their way to beers, encouraging going outside of their comfort zone, running into friends and being able to help expand horizons are just some of the fun things you get to do as a beer geek.

One of the starkest differences I found between last years’ festival and this years as a beer geek was the number of people who knew stuff about beer. While I commented about this last year, I found that many of the people at the matinee were clear on what they wanted to try, what they liked, and had a good base knowledge about beer. Into the evening, chatting with folks about what they enjoyed, I found the same thing. That’s awesome.

This year’s festival grew just slightly over last years with about 88 booths and over 250 beers and ciders from around the world. From what I’ve heard, there were ~2000 in attendance at the Friday night session, ~1500 at the Saturday afternoon matinee and ~2500 at the Saturday night sessions. This is a huge growth from last year that saw just over 4000 for the whole event. Seeing a ~2000 person increase from the previous year’s festival is huge.

The highlights of the festival for me were mostly found at ice level. While there were certainly some good breweries and beers up in the concourse, all the local breweries were on the ice level along with Surly and Lake of the Woods. Surly was my best in show brewery. I have nothing bad to say about their beers and the Todd the Axeman IPA was by far one of my favourite beers.

The Surly crew

My best in show beer for this festival came from Jeff Stacey who brewed a gold medal winning “Intergalactic Blonde” for the Winnipeg Brew Bombers Pro/Am competition. It was the Brew Bombers booth and was just stellar. A huge shout out to all the other local breweries. A lot of good stuff on tap and it was great to see Nonsuch there with their beer. I could take a lot of time just listing the breweries and beers I enjoyed, but with them being local I’ll just encourage you to go out and try beer.

Finally, I had someone ask me what Flatlander’s gives that going to taprooms and the liquor mart doesn’t. For me, Flatlander’s is about giving people the opportunity to expand their beer horizons with the “fear” of not liking something or wasting money. It gives people the chance to try that beer they’ve seen at the Liquor Marts but have been unsure if they want to try it. They can find new beers they love, new styles they enjoy, and learn about these beers and styles.

Besides raising money for a fantastic cause, Flatlander’s Beer Festival gives beer geeks and beer novices an opportunity to learn something new about beer, and find new beers that they love. I’m going to give a big shout out to Steve Beauchesne, co-founder of Beau’s All Natural Brewing, for the awesome talk on an under represented style, the Gruit. Great talk, and great beer. Also to Aaron and Amanda from the Liquor Marts for their efforts during the night. Thanks to you both.

I can’t wait for next year’s festival. This summer is a great opportunity to get out and try the local beers/new beers coming to Winnipeg. So do it, and keep following along with me. I’ve got more write-ups on the way including a Welcome to Manitoba Surly post, my write-up of my chat with Oxus, and another Get to know a brewer on deck.

This years’ Flatlander’s Beer Festival was by far the best one to date. With 72 booths and over 240 beers, it was the largest beer festival we’ve held in Manitoba. The number of beers isn’t always important, but the quality, variety and style variations made this year pretty darn awesome. Not only that, the local breweries were out in force and brought their A-game, giving every single one of us a reason to be proud.

I had a unique opportunity this year. I attended all three sessions of Flatlander’s in different capacities. On Friday night I had the joy of being a patron, enjoying around 70 unique beers. On Saturday I participated in the “ask a beer geek” initiative and had a great time answering questions and helping guide people towards beers. Then, on Saturday night, I had the opportunity to pour for Brewsters’ Brewing Company. Each of these experiences brought a different perspective of the festival and dang, it was fun.

As a patron, I was incredibly impressed with how well organized the beer festival was this year. They had multiple entrances that split up the crowd, they used the concourse as well as the ice, which helped spread the crowd out to make the beers more accessible, and they had fantastic volunteers who did an awesome job helping guide people where they wanted to go.

For me, the most exciting part was the fact the first 9 booths were all local. Barn Hammer, Farmery, Fort Garry, Half Pints, Brazen Hall, Nonsuch, Torque, One Great City and the Winnipeg Brew Bombers were there with a lot of fantastic beer.

As I said above, these local breweries brought their A-game and provided a fantastic opportunity to not only try a huge number of delicious beers, but also connect with the brewers and breweries. The local booths were packed all night long with patrons drinking, chatting, and buying the merchandise. I got me a Torque hat, a Barn Hammer hat and a One Great City shirt… eventually I’ll collect them all!

I can’t wait to try more of the local stuff as it starts to trickle into the market. From what I had the opportunity to taste (every single one) I am excited to continue to support local brewers. This is what I was writing about last year, what I’ve been writing about since I started this blog: We are finally seeing the craft beer community in Manitoba grow…and it’s good.

As a beer geek, I had the opportunity to answer questions people had about beers, hand out some cool swag to patrons and help guide people who didn’t really have a plan. It was a great opportunity to use some of the knowledge I’ve gathered to help others better understand and enjoy beer. I found many people are becoming really well-educated themselves, and that people were just as excited about the local beer as I was.

While I didn’t have many questions besides “Where is the local stuff” or “Where am I?”, I did have some fun ones. One group had tried a few beers and asked “What is it about these beers I don’t like?” which was a fun one to answer. Others were curious about the use of nitro in One Great City’s Milk Stout, or what a Randall was. Overall, I was working with some really smart people and had a great time getting to meet a lot of new folks, help them enjoy their beer, and learn a little bit more myself from talking with brewers.

As a pourer for Brewsters’, I had the opportunity to stand still while the festival crowd flowed around me. It was hectic; the first hour flew past in what felt like five minutes. I spent the first bit getting to know the beers as best I could – tasting them on Friday night helped – and talking to Don about Brewsters’. We poured four beers: River City Raspberry Wheat, Honest Paul IPA, Hammerhead Red Ale, and the Hawaiian Coconut Porter. The night ended up being a lot of fun with me repeatedly saying things such as “this is a traditional English porter, finished with real coconut. It has chocolate and coffee notes in it as well” or “this is a big 70 IBU IPA with mosaic, Citra and cascade hops with a big late hop addition that bring big grapefruit and passion fruit notes.”

This gave me a good barometer for people who knew something about beer and those who did not. While two years ago Flatlander’s seemed to have a large number of people asking “what’s an IPA?” this year I didn’t have a single person ask that. There will certainly always be room for people to learn more about beer, but the amount of knowledge people showed Saturday night was great to witness. I’m so happy Manitobans are increasingly embracing craft beer, are excited about new beers and local beers, and want to try something they’ve never had.

Talking with Don, a man who has been in the beer industry for close to 20 years, was fantastic. This guy really knows his beer and his product and I really hope that we see some of it come to Winnipeg. The Honest Paul IPA was delicious and I’m a sucker for a good Coconut Porter. We’ve already got their Brewmaster Collection in Liquor Marts, but we will also see a Peach Ale coming to town for the final flight of Coast to Coaster.

Overall, I had a fantastic time at the beer festival. It helped build excitement for the local breweries, something I’ve been working hard to do, and gave people their first sampling of what is to come. Next year’s festival will be even better as the breweries here this year – most with the help of Half Pints – will be open and brewing on their own systems. They will have grown and we will have, hopefully, even more new breweries giving us a first taste side-by-side with those from this year. While we had nine local booths at this year’s festival, I really hope to see us take up 20 booths next year.

So, fellow beer fans, I encourage you to get out and enjoy local beer this summer. Of the new folks, Barn Hammer is already sending beer out the door; you can find it at Fools & Horses and Earls right now, and Torque will hopefully be coming up close behind. Many of us have been clamouring for more craft beer so now it’s time to put our money where our mouth is – and also beer where our mouth is. It’s time to get out and show these places that we will support them.

Let’s end today’s post with a question. If you attended Flatlander’s, what was your favourite beer? Answer in the comments below.